Sound over ethernet in Windows

June 13, 2005 1:53 AM

I have a laptop connected to my desktop by ethernet. The desktop has a nice soundcard that outputs to my stereo. Is there any software that allows any sound playing on my laptop to be spirited away over the ethernet and play on the desktop's soundcard?

It seems like an easy enough idea - a sound driver that sends the audio (probably compressed) over the network to another computer. But all the solutions I can find seem to be hardware based - little network audio boxes. Any (free) ideas? I'm running Windows XP on both machines.

posted by Jimbob to computers & internet (6 comments total)

If it's just music you're interested in streaming, iTunes can do that very simply. Just enable library sharing in iTunes on both machines and take it from there.
posted by toddshot at 2:18 AM on June 13, 2005

It's not just music i'm interested in sharing - in particular, I want to play the output from various synthesizer software, so something that acts as a fake sound driver, accessibly from any software, is important.
posted by Jimbob at 2:21 AM on June 13, 2005

No, but just send the audio out from your notebook to your desktop with a male-to-male mini headphone cable. That's how I share audio between my powerbook and PC (speakers hooked up only to the PC).
posted by mathowie at 3:19 AM on June 13, 2005

If you are running Windows XP Pro on your laptop you can do this with Remote Desktop.

(see this picture for where the setting is)
posted by SNACKeR at 4:58 AM on June 13, 2005

Run a shoutcast server from your notebook and point Winamp (or any other music app that can play streams) to your notebook.

Takes about 15 minutes to set it up properly, the walkthrough on the site does a good job at explaining it in a step by step manner.
posted by furtive at 5:04 AM on June 13, 2005

Yep - remote desktop
posted by kenchie at 9:14 AM on June 13, 2005